Disease

It’s tempting to think of DARPA as the US Government’s evil technology agency, but Alexis Madrigal has discovered one DARPA program that might just be an incredible solution to infectious diseases, reporting…

Hey smokers, in case the usual life shortening diseases associated with smoking don’t scare you, how about erectile dysfunction during your shortened life? Or if you’re female how about diabetes or rheumatoid…

Finally some tough questions are being asked about one of Big Pharma’s most successful manufactured “diseases,” ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). The New York Times reports that the number of diagnoses soared…

Via I Love Chile, doctors are baffled by the incredibly rare, quasi-religious condition of haemolacria, or crying tears of blood:

The rare disease haemolacria is known as one of the “most alarming and unusual complaints in opthalmology.” Twenty-year old Yaritza Oliva from Purranque, who cries tears of blood, says, “Nobody knows what I need, they don’t know what I have or what to do.”

At first, Chilean doctors believed Yaritza to have an infection or the like, but since then ophthalmologist Dr Alexander Lutz has clarified doubts about this strange condition. The illness has not been declared as deadly, but the different victims have to suffer the pain of their condition and cases of discrimination as well.

Until today, only three other cases of haemolacria have been reported: Calvino Inman, a 16-year-old boy from the United States, Twinkle Dwivedi, living in India and 12 when the illness broke out, and Rashida Khatoon from India.

Most people who contract the mosquito-borne pathogen West Nile virus are asymptomatic, and even those who do get sick usually experience flu-like symptoms that resolve on their own. In a small percentage…

In the future, synthetic viruses will be unleashed which spread quickly, producing no symptoms — until they reach a targeted person whose DNA sequence unlocks the virus’s lethal abilities. The Atlantic reveals…

Via NPR: There’s disturbing news coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The sexually-transmitted disease Gonorrhea is getting close to being untreatable. There’s only one antibiotic left that works against…

Via NPR: Left untreated, infection with rabies virus almost always results in a painful death. There has been some limited success with experimental treatment regimens (notably the Milwaukee Protocol), but these are…